Numerical study of the initial particle parking structure of cement/geopolymer paste and dissolution of amorphous silica using real-shape particles

Published

July 18, 2018

Author(s)

Edward Garboczi, Guang Ye, Zhiwei Qian, Yibing Zuo

Abstract

Many particle-based numerical models have been used to simulate the hydration process of cementitious materials. But most of these models employ regular shape particles, like the commonly used spheres, to represent cement, slag or fly ash, which neglects the influence of particle shape. To deal with this issue, this study used irregular shape particles to simulate the initial particle parking structures of cement/geopolymer pastes. The irregular shapes of cement, slag and fly ash particles are characterized by spherical harmonic series. Compared to the initial particle structures simulated using spherical particles, the simulated initial particle structures using irregular shape particles have larger total surface areas and bulk specific surface areas. However, the pore size distributions of the simulated initial particle structures do not show significant influence of particle shape. As a demonstration to illustrate the influence of particle shape on dissolution, the initial particle parking structure of amorphous silica in alkaline solution was generated using irregular shape particles, and was used as input to simulate the dissolution of silica particles. The Lattice Boltzmann method was used to simulate the transport of aqueous ions and thermodynamics was used to consider the rate of dissolution of silica. The dissolved fractions of silica at different temperatures in the simulations agreed well with experimental measurements. The influences of continuous stirring, concentration of alkali and particle shape on the dissolution kinetics of silica were also investigated numerically.

Citation

Construction and Building Materials

Volume

185

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

numerical simulation, parking structure, cement/geopolymer paste, dissolution, amorphous silicanumerical simulation, parking structure, cement/geopolymer paste, dissolution, amorphous silicanumerical simulation, parking structure, cement/geopolymer paste, dissolution, amorphous silica

Citation

Garboczi, E. , Ye, G. , Qian, Z. and Zuo, Y. (2018), Numerical study of the initial particle parking structure of cement/geopolymer paste and dissolution of amorphous silica using real-shape particles, Construction and Building Materials, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.07.063 (Accessed December 14, 2024)